Catherine wheel biscuits

Catherine wheel biscuits

We’ve made these spiral biscuits before but this time thought we’d jazz them up a little bit more to make some special Catherine wheel firework biscuits for Bonfire night.

They work well when you use proper food colouring that doesn’t fade in the oven. We use some Wilton ones (“EU” Icing Colour Kit 28g (By Wilton)) which are great as they really stay vibrant once cooked.

Ingredients

Method

Rub the flour and butter together

Get your kids to measure the flour and butter out add to a large mixing bowl. Using your fingers rub it together until it looks like breadcrumbs. This is one of my kid’s favourite things to do in the kitchen but it can get a bit messy if you’re not careful!

Add the sugar, egg and vanilla

Measure the sugar out and add to your flour/butter mixture. Add the egg and vanilla extract. If your kids are in charge of the egg, I normally find it safer to crack it into a small bowl first, before adding it to your dough in case you end up with rogue shell.

Knead or mix everything together until it is well combined into a nice soft dough.

Split the dough into two even amounts. Add the pink colouring to one of them and blue to the other (or any other colours you’re using).

Wrap both blocks of dough in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Form the biscuit dough

Sprinkle a little flour down on your work surface. Roll each of the blocks of dough out in turn so they are around 25cm x 20cm or approximately the same size. Lay one over the top of the other. Lightly roll over the surface a few times with your rolling pin to press them together.

I found my dough was a bit soft and sticky which made this step a bit tricky. If the same happens to you, you could chill the dough for a bit longer, add a little more flour or use a piece of baking paper over the top of the dough to stop it sticking to the rolling pin.

Trim off the edges of the dough so it’s nice and neat then roll them up, starting at one of the short edges to make a tight spiral. Wrap the dough and clingfilm and chill for at least an hour or overnight.

Make the spiral biscuits
Preheat the oven to 180C / 160C Fan / gas 4 / 350F and line a baking tray with baking/parchment paper.

Unwrap the dough, trim the ends, and cut the rest into about 20 slices. Lay them on your baking tray.

Bake the spiral biscuits

Bake them in the oven for 12-15 minutes. They’re ready when they are just starting to go slightly golden at the very edges (you don’t want them to colour too much).

Leave them to cool on the baking tray before transferring them to a wire rack to cool complelety.

If you want to decorate them, simply melt a little milk chocolate in a small bowl in the microwave, roll the edge of the biscuits around in it and dip it in the sprinkles.